Lunes, Abril 2, 2012

PATIENCE: Smart people, just a bit retarded.

Yep, this post is dedicated to the Senior honor's section of Stella Maris Academy of Davao, batch '11-'12, as promised. Sorry for the delay, guys. I've been doing Summer stuff.

If you want to find me, look for the guy who has the bad haircut.

If you want to read something heartwarming and touching about the aforementioned honor's section, read my good friend Kline's heartwarming and touching post about the aforementioned honor's section. (I also edited a bit of his grammar, by the way.) I'm not going for tears and nostalgia and joyful memories in my post. I'm here to complain.

My last section as a High School student was named "Patience".

It was the section for the top students, and it was the first time my school tried segregating students according to their academic capabilities.

As I've stated before, I never gave two shits about my academic life. I barely studied, probably because I hated being told what to do. I love my parents so much. I'm really blessed that I have parents that love me as much as I do them. I definitely know that they're proud of me already, and that was enough for us. They already knew that me being an academically outstanding student wasn't really necessary. It wasn't that important.

They didn't need grades to tell them their kid was smart.
I didn't need grades to tell me I was smart.
Being told that you're smart is totally different from knowing that your smart.
And I love them for accepting that. I focused my time on various things that totally did not concern studying.

In the start of the school year, I had no idea what it would be like sharing a room with all the "smart kids" and none of the "dumb and funny kids". I was optimistic then. I believed that my last school year in High School would be the type of "perfect year" that I had always envisioned every summer. It's what gets me excited every time summer is ending. It's what I look forward to every year.

I imagined what it would be like: Everybody'd understand each other. No more fucking dramas. Everybody'd talk like friends.

I was wrong.

Going back to my point, as I've stated above: My last section in High School is exactly like Green Day.

All my classmates look exactly like this, but with less eyeliner and hand-grenades.

I'd better explain further; they are exactly like Green Day from my perspective, which means that I associate them with my favorite band for some reason. The comparison may be negative and positive at the same time. Bear with me, I might be making some sense.

When I was a little boy, devoid of any form of musical preference, I got to know the band through my cousin's playlist. I still remember the first song by them that made any kind of impact on me - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).

However, the impact was very negative for me.

First off, that wasn't a good song to listen to when you're only getting to know the band. It wasn't a smart "first song" choice because it was a song about goodbyes, endings, and "moving on"s. (I'm not good with synonyms.)

Second, it was cheesy as hell. It was very, very corny. Maybe I was too young to realize what it meant, but it was ridiculously overplayed at the time. Everybody knew the song, even Christian parents knew the song. It was played at every graduation, wedding, baptism, bachelor party...

It is titled "Time of Your Life". Plus, it's a great song for strippers to strip to.

And third, it made me not want to be a Green Day fan. I stopped listening and probably said

But that all changed when Green Day released American Idiot. I'm not talking about the song, I'm talking about the album. That album changed my life. It had a story, great songs, and practically most of my 6th grade friends would dissect the shit out of the songs. They were amazing.

Then I started to listen to Green Day's older shit.
And I realized how inane and dumb and stupid I really was. But, Godbless my soul, it wasn't too late to change how I felt about Green Day.
I started off with their early stuff: Kerplunk, Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, Dookie.
Then I moved on with the rest of their awe-inspiring discography: Nimrod, Insomniac.
And then I returned to Time of Your Life.
And I loved it. So much. It taught me that yes, friendships do end but there's always space for some new ones. (Being a 6th grader at the time made me realize that graduations often end in friends moving on to other schools.) It taught me so much. I practically hated myself.

And just recently, it happened all over again.
To cut the bullshit, I'll say it right now:

I hated you people. Well, most of you, anyway.
I wanted no part in being an honor student because I was a stereotyping bastard. I made harsh opinions about you people: I thought you guys were shallow robots who study all the time because it's what your parents tell you to; I thought you guys always did what you were told because you guys want to be saints in the most hypocritical way possible.

I thought you guys were just way too competitive in something that I just didn't believe in.

For the better part of the school year, I hated my section.
I know my Patience family will read this, and I'm sorry. It's not that I hate the people in it, it's just that I hate that I just didn't get what this section stood for.

Don't get me wrong, I love you guys. I love everyone in the section. I became closer to this section than any section before. But shit, that wasn't true in the first months of school. Hold on, the ending of this blog post will get better, promise.

In a nutshell, my section stood for one thing: Bringing out the best student inside each of us. That's not my jam.

My bro Ryan Wong (whom I described in detail here) was also my classmate, but he was exactly like me. To tell the truth, he didn't know why he was one of the top 50 students, either. He didn't stand for that shit. He didn't want any part of that shit. We did not like that shit.

The face of the man who hates that shit.

And let me tell you something about Wong, when he dislikes something, he'll be sure as hell to voice it out. Some of my classmates may remember both of us being the noisiest people in the room whenever they are doing exams and shit (excluding, of course, the incomparable Kline Aranjuez). We'd frantically disturb them whenever they'd make their assignments at the same time.

It was probably pretty evident, because I (with my partner-in-crime Wong) was constantly disturbing you people every time you did your homeworks in class or when you guys started answering fucking Math assignments in unison or when you guys just started studying in recess, or those times when the class just suddenly behaved and got very silent even when there were no teachers around.
We didn't understand that. Those times used to make us very, very angry. Probably because we were some of the most shallow people in the school.

We just didn't relate to you. We weren't as dignified as that.

These guys would even listen to Chinese lessons!

But obviously, we've grown to actually like you people. Probably because none of you guys were assholes. All of you were actually kind of well-meaning.

Except in C.A.T.
Because C.A.T. is just too fucking ridiculous.
(I'll blame the C.A.T. for the tension and conflicts we had because C.A.T is a monster that makes us turn on each other like uncivilized honor students.)
No one likes you, C.A.T.

Probably what undergraduates think C.A.T. is.

I'll take this blog to say it: I'm sorry.
I was wrong. I never wanted to be an asshole in the first days of school, but I was.
You guys are the best classmates I ever had. I've been closest with this section than any other in High School.

Wong is also kind of sorry. :(

You guys are exactly like Green Day in my perspective.
You were the awesome people that I criminally shunned as shit at first, but then I eventually came to my senses and realized that you guys were probably some of the best things to happen in my High School life.
I am seriously glad that I realized it way before graduation because regrets would suck so much.

I remember when I was cast as Finn in the hilarious musical-drama production, Enchantlee (in the video)

I remember playing guitar in that awesome song composition thing we won.

I remember going through Recollection with you guys. My roommates were technically the best brothers an only-child like me could ever ask for.

I'm part of the RETARDS, and I'm proud to be the NO. 1 RETARD.

I'm the one with the probably-gay hairstylist at the bottom-center.

Even though I was enormously different from you guys, you still accepted me like I was a good guy like yourselves.

You guys accepted my hairstyles when nobody would.

At this point, I can say nothing to end this post without it being awfully cliched. But, I know you guys like religion, getting good grades, and probably anything nice... so I won't say anything specific.